Q3. Great! I know my destination. How do I get there?
Diet and exercise. In that order.
When I use the word diet, I don't mean a temporary eating plan that you'll drop once you lose the weight. Instead I mean how you will eat every day going forward for the rest of your life. This is a lifestyle change where you fundamentally alter your relationship with food. It cannot just stop when you reach your goal weight - that's just a recipe for gaining the weight back again.
Why diet is important is easy to answer. In simple terms, if you take in more energy than you use up, your body stores the surplus as fat. If the opposite happens, your body digests fat stores for energy instead. If things get really dire, your body even has the option of digesting your body's muscle, then its organs to keep itself going. Your body evolved to tolerate periods of starvation and works hard to make use of everything you give it, but that resilience works against us in the modern world.
About 75% of the energy your body uses day to day is spent on just keeping you alive. This includes maintaining brain function, operating vital organs and digesting your food. This is energy you will use up just by lying in bed all day asleep. The rest is determined by your level of physical activity.
Contrary to much of the popular wisdom out there, exercise, of the kind that people do in the gym, on the field or on the running track, has very little direct impact on weight loss. Doing exercise has lots of benefits in terms of improved circulation, toning your muscles, strengthening your body, increased lung capacity, better mood and generally making day to day life easier. If you exercise, you will feel better and look better, but not because the exercise itself had very much effect on your body fat.
I should add that having more muscle on your body increases your basal metabolic rate and the way you increase muscle is also through exercise, but it takes quite a bit of muscle to make any kind of noticeable difference. If you haven't been body building for six months or more, you probably wouldn't notice that your dietary needs are any greater at all. Besides, it's very difficult to build up muscle while also losing weight. To build muscle, you need to eat MORE not less, so the two processes work against each other. It's safe to assume therefore that this won't be a factor while you're on your weight loss journey. If you want a muscular body instead of a chubby one, moreover, it will be more efficient time-wise for you to concentrate on one goal at a time. Lose the excess fat first, then build up the muscle - you'll see results faster. The exercise you do now is done so you can keep what muscle mass you have already. It'll be a fool's errand trying to gain more right now. That's just how the body works.
Exercise increases your resting metabolic rate, but only by a bit, maybe a few percentage points overall. You get a little additional increase in your metabolic rate just after exercising too, which wears off after a little while. This is nice, but not that significant if you only exercise for an hour a day. The body is surprisingly efficient in the way it expends energy during exercise, so an hour of cardio only ends up netting you the caloric equivalent of a single cookie. Basically, you can't eat extra on the days you train "because you earned it". Sorry. You didn't earn more food. What you earned can be counted in terms of stronger musculature, better circulation and increased mobility.
Doing exercise consistently throughout the day however, does start to add up, to the point where Olympic athletes, who train for a significant portion of the day, may need double the energy intake of we mere mortals.
It means then that a schoolteacher who doesn't do any exercise outside her job may need more energy than an office worker who works out for an hour a day at the gym. The schoolteacher is on her feet all day and may walk several kilometres inadvertently, burning through more energy than the office worker in total. It's why those 10,000 step a day challenges are so popular.
It means that for most people who don't have that kind of occupation, there is a terrible truth to face. It may not be possible for you to compensate for a poor diet by simply exercising more. More simply, you can't outrun your fork.
The good news is that there are lots of tools to help you eat better and, crucially for this challenge, eat at a caloric deficit.
Q4. Well, that's disappointing. How do I eat at a caloric deficit?
The first thing you need is information about the food you eat.
Download a calorie tracking app like MyFitnessPal or LoseIt (MFP had a recent high profile data breach - use a throwaway email to sign up if you can). Even if you aren't watching calories per se, they offer a good breakdown on the kind of nutrients that are in food. They even have a great feature that let you scan barcodes and bring up nutritional info using your smartphone. Whether you decide to count calories, follow a low carb diet, a high fat diet, a low fat diet, skip meals or whatever, these apps will make you more aware of what you're putting in your body and how the food you eat fits into your diet. Something that might be advertised as high protein may also be full of sugar, for instance, so it's better to have the information up front than to sabotage your own efforts unknowingly.
The second thing you need is a set of digital kitchen scales. Until you get a good sense of how big a proper portion size is, this is invaluable. You need to train your mind to get used to seeing how big a "serving" is supposed to be. It is very easy to accidentally overeat, even on an otherwise healthy diet and this is your safeguard against that. Don't try to eyeball your portion sizes if you don't already have a good sense of how much (say) 100 grams or 1 ounce is. I can almost guarantee your brain will play tricks on you (because it's food and not rocks) and you will get it wrong.
Third you should find out what your daily energy needs actually are, so you can calibrate your meal sizes accordingly. There are many calculators online that will help you find out what your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is. This affected by your gender (men need more energy than women), height (tall people have more lean mass to burn energy with), age (you need less energy as you get older) and your current weight (it takes more energy to move a heavy body around than a light one). The last one is important because as you lose weight, your daily energy needs decrease, which means that you'll need to recalculate it every once in a while to keep your progress on track. Be aware that when online calculators ask for your level of activity, they mean what your activity level is moment-to-moment in your daily life, so being a tour guide counts for more than being an office worker. Even if you go hard at the gym for an hour a day, every day, put down sedentary if you have a job in a toll booth. A decent calculator (that cites references) can be found here:
https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html
The above of course, can only give you an estimate based on the average person. If you're serious about calculating your actual TDEE with more accuracy, you'll need more data – that means daily weigh ins and caloric totals over the course of months. To accomplish this, you can use this spreadsheet here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/4mhvpn/adaptive_tdee_tracking_spreadsheet_v3_rescue/
Finally you need a plan on how you'll eat better. The best diet is the one you stick with, so whether you go low carb, high fat, low fat or intermittent fasting, do it in a way that you won't just want to quit after a week. Remember, for this to work, the changes you make need to be permanent. You're just setting yourself up to fail if your diet is making you miserable.
Q5. Wow. Okay. So what diet should I follow? Vegan? CICO? Vegetarian? Keto? Low Fat? I quit sugar? Paleo? Intermittent Fasting?
It doesn't matter.
Q6. You don't mean that, surely?
Sure I do, but let me clarify. For the purposes of losing weight, it doesn't matter what you eat as long as you're eating at a caloric deficit (i.e. using up more than you're putting in) while you're losing weight, then find a caloric equilibrium point when you've lost the weight in order to keep it off. Provided that you eat at a caloric deficit, that you're getting adequate amounts of protein, (good) fat, vitamins, minerals etc. and that you stick with it, I promise you the weight will come off.
All of these different diets you've heard of work the same way - they force the body to use up its fat stores by putting you at a caloric deficit. Even diets that don't purport to be about that or claim to accelerate the process, work with this as the underlying mechanism that affects the weight loss.
Meat is energy rich, so eating vegetarian or vegan will help you achieve a caloric deficit and let you lose weight. Carbohydrate-heavy food such as bread or sugar are energy rich, so avoiding these foods on a low carb diet will help you achieve a caloric deficit and let you lose weight. Fatty foods are energy rich, so avoiding them on a low fat diet will help you achieve a caloric deficit and let you lose weight. Root vegetables and grains tend to be energy rich, so avoiding them on a paleo diet will help you achieve a caloric deficit and let you lose weight. Skipping a meal every once in a while means that you get less food overall, so doing this as part of intermittent fasting will help you achieve a caloric deficit and let you lose weight.
Are you noticing the pattern here?
To repeat myself, very best diet is the one you stick with. When you're choosing what broad diet to follow, make sure it fits you personally. It's no good losing weight by eating nothing but beans and vegetables if that's going to make you miserable and make your stomach rumble every time you pass a bakery. You need to be able to eat this way for the rest of your life or you will fail.
One thing that is critically important while losing weight is that you are getting enough protein. Having a high proportion of protein in your diet helps the body retain muscle as it burns through your fat stores, which is important for general health, strength, looking good when you do get thinner and ensuring that your daily energy expenditure doesn't just drop to rock bottom. Take your weight in kilograms and multiply by 1.32 (if you're using pounds, then multiply by 0.6) to get the minimum amount of daily protein in grams you'll need to aim for to make that happen. And for the love of all that you hold dear, exercise, lest your muscles atrophy (i.e. shrink) due to lack of use. Your muscles burn energy just sitting there - preserve them. You can absolutely lose weight while keeping your most strenuous physical activity as playing video games, but you will end up weak, scrawny and maybe even a bit flabby at the end of the process, plus your diet will need to be that much more restricted.
There is a lot of talk about how certain macronutrients (the broad categories of carbohydrates, protein and fats) "slow down" your metabolism or others "speed it up". I won't say this is all junk science, because biochemistry and how the body reacts to stimuli are very complicated topics and still little understood in many ways, but I will say that the cumulative effect of these things won't ever stop you from losing weight, provided you do eat at a caloric deficit. It also stands to reason that a varied diet will also cause at least some of these effects to cancel each other out, so that overall it shouldn't matter.
The science behind nutrition is also constantly changing and improving, so beware of being too dogmatic on a point you read about in the paper, on Facebook or in a fitness blog. Where once, it was thought that eating eggs would raise your blood cholesterol, it is now understood that the mechanisms behind blood cholesterol are more complicated than that and that the body produces its own cholesterol for reasons that are wholly separate from your dietary intake of the stuff. Eggs are now understood to be a danger only to certain people who already have a specific kind of cholesterol problem, but fine for the rest of us.
There is even research that suggests that saturated fats may not be as bad for you as first reported. It's probably still not a good idea to be wrapping all your meals in bacon, but it goes to show you that it's foolish to look at a single aspect of nutrition and declare that it is the sole reason for one health problem or another. As with everything to do with the human body, the real answer is more subtle and complicated than it looks at first glance.
Assuming you've taken all that in, let's talk about specific diets. Here is a breakdown of some of the more popular ones:
CICO (Calories In, Calories Out): This one attacks the problem by taking direct control of the calories you eat. The advantage is that it's very methodical and lets you tailor your diet to what you want, so you can mix and match or pair this with another eating plan. If you keep your calories at a deficit you will lose weight, even if you eat ice cream and McDonalds every day (not that I recommend this). The drawback is that you need tremendous self discipline to keep track of every little thing that goes into your mouth and be able to say no once you hit your daily limit. Many people find this annoying and think it sucks the fun out of life. This is the method I personally use though, combined with a low carb diet, because it keeps me full and turns losing weight into a process my brain understands instinctively - min-maxing in an RPG.
You can lose weight pretty consistently at a caloric deficit of ~2000kJ / 500kcal per day. This amounts to something in the order of 500g / 1lb lost a week for me, but the number is always relative to how big you currently are and your own physiology. There are calculators online that help you estimate rate of weight loss for a given caloric deficit and the MyFitnessPal app automatically calculates this deficit for you if you input how fast you want to lose the weight. Remember that the upper limit of what you should aim for is around 1kg / 2lb a week or 1% of your current body weight if you're a bit bigger. Any faster and you risk triggering hormonal changes in your body that will work against you.
Vegetarianism/Veganism: It isn't always fair to lump these together, but both help you lose weight by eliminating a big source of calories from your diet (meat). The advantages of these diets are that they're ethically and environmentally sound, offer much in the way of flavour options and, in the case of vegetarianism, is relatively easy to follow when out and about. Veganism is trickier, but still doable. A big drawback is that it's easy to develop a protein deficiency on these diets, especially the vegan diet. Same with iron. Both are easily solved by specifically targeting good sources of both in your diet and maybe taking supplements, but it is a point you will need to pay attention to.
There is an official Era thread discussing Veganism here:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/veganera-ot-eat-your-veggies.1099/
Low Fat: This is what the Baby Boomers were using to lose weight (remember the food pyramid?). The idea is that fatty foods are energy rich, so avoiding them helps you eat at a caloric deficit. There was also the popular notion that eating fat makes your body put fat on, which is intuitive, but wrong in every particular. It works if you get the serving sizes right, but is a sad, joyless diet, full of tiny portions and flavourless, unsatisfying food. It should go without saying too that it's easy to get this diet wrong because sugary foods, which may be low in fat, are nevertheless calorie rich themselves and not very filling either.
Low Carb: It's exactly what it says on the tin. This diet and others like it work by virtue of the fact that you've not only eliminated a major energy source (carbs), but also because meat and fatty foods keep you full for longer than grains do, so it's easier to eat at a caloric deficit. In fact, many people on this type of diet eat at a caloric deficit accidentally, mainly on account of how filling the food is. Diets like Paleo, Keto, High Fat Low Carb (HFLC), Atkins et al work on the same basic principle. Be warned though that it's easy to get this sort of diet wrong, since eating 500g of steak cooked in butter every day is still not going to be good for you, even if you do manage to eat at a caloric deficit.
Keto: This is the diet de jour, so I'll give it its own description. It's a version of a low carb, high fat, medium protein diet that tries to virtually eliminate all carb intake, limiting your diet to meats, dairy and fatty or fibrous vegetables. The idea is that if you get your carb intake low enough, you will trigger a metabolic process called ketosis, which forces your body to preferentially burn fat rather than carbohydrates. The boost you get from ketosis itself is the subject of much debate and there isn't a clear scientific consensus that the effect is significant, since you're getting a lot of dietary fat from the diet anyway. It's also difficult to achieve the dietary mix you need to trigger it. Luckily, even if ketosis turns out to be a bust or if you consistently fail to trigger ketosis, a keto diet will still help you lose weight by virtue of being a low carb diet and keeping you full, even on a caloric deficit.
Intermittent Fasting: Also known as "skipping breakfast". It works by limiting the times of day (or the week) you're allowed to eat, so even if you pig out during your allocated meal times, you still come up with a caloric deficit in aggregate. Some people even go hardcore and fast for days at a time, using supplements and water to keep the head clear and the body functioning while it's happening. It sounds like a nightmare to me, but the body did evolve to tolerate periods of fasting, and, done correctly, it does work.
There is an official thread discussing intermittent fasting here:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/intermittent-fasting-ot.7893/
I can't really help you much more beyond the basics, except to say that, generally speaking, if you have a varied diet that includes different kinds of meat, dairy, fruit, nuts and vegetables, you're not likely to have any dietary deficiencies, so vitamins are usually a waste of time except in very specific circumstances, like anaemia or with some vegan or vegetarian diets.
Oh and some general tips:
• Cooking for yourself is the best way to control what goes into your food. Healthy food needn't be bland either - mustard, soy, herbs and spices add basically no calories to a meal and can elevate it to something amazing
• You'll find out when you start calorie tracking, but cutting soft drinks and fruit juices from your diet immediately eliminates a huge source of "empty" calories from your diet. Tea and coffee on the other hand, are virtually calorie free.
• Sugar is bad for you in large amounts. Try to cut down on your intake of it
• Aspartame is not the devil and probably won't give you cancer. Failing to change your lifestyle and keeping the excess weight on is definitely more dangerous to your health than an effect characterized by a weak correlation in a study that overdosed some rats with the equivalent of a barrel of artificial sweetener
• Fries are delicious, but they are really bad for you. Eat your occasional burger if you want, but hold the fries
• Cheat meals slow down your progress but are good for the soul, especially if it's done with friends. Don't go overboard though. Limit yourself to once a week or so and try to keep it on the scale of having a slice of cake for dessert rather than eating an entire roast chicken or having three cheat meals in the same day.
• Exercise in the morning if you can. You'll be more motivated and less fatigued from the day
• Snack less if you can manage it. It means mealtimes are something to look forward to
• Alcohol is very energy rich. Your body breaks it down into, among other things, sugar. Try to cut down on your intake and, where possible, switch to spirits
